[Imc] Pre-Proposal for Community Web Hosting

[Zachary C. Miller]

This pre-proposal will be presented by Sascha to the Steering Group on
Sunday. This proposal has a _lot_ of gaps to be filled in and a lot of
discussion to be had before it reaches its final form. Consider this
very much a draft and very much open to change. After it is presented
to Steering Group on Sunday Sascha and I will discuss it in depth with
the Tech and Finance focus groups before bringing a final form back to
the Steering Group. Please let us know if you have any comments,
questions, concerns, suggestions, or koans. 

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*** START OF PROPOSAL ***
*************************

This proposal has been written jointly by Zachary Miller and Sascha
Meinrath.

The purpose of this (pre-)proposal is to begin a collaboration with
Zachary Miller and groogroo and eventually for the Urbana-Champaign IMC to
host groogroo as a community service.  The total costs of this project for
the Urbana-Champaign IMC are estimated at $2500/year:

$200/month for DSL (this amount is still being negotiated with Sol Tec)
$5-10/month for electricity
$10-12/year/domain hosted

The IMC would charge fees for service and would retain any profits
made. Fee structure and allocation of funds would remain entirely
within the domain of IMC's decision making structure. Any shortfall
would be fully covered by Zachary Miller.  Thus, the UCIMC would
suffer no financial liability by adding these services to the projects
it currently undertakes.

*************************
***    Background     ***
*************************

Zachary Miller's Background Remarks:
I've been paying $250/month for my DSL connection for over a year. I
bought this expensive connection specifically to support community web
hosting. I have tried to let everyone that I host for know that at
some point in the future I reserve the right to start charging for
services. 

My financial situation has changed significantly and I am no longer
able to sustainably support the $200-$250/month bill for my DSL
services. I have to start charging for those services. The question
has simply been how to do the accounting. Do I form a non-profit
corporation (can it be 501c3?) or a for-profit sole proprietorship? Or
do I ally with an existing organization (IMC? OJC?)?

The best idea seemed to be to ally with the IMC which is the primary
user of my groogroo server. We could then charge all the non-IMC
entities that use the server a fee to cover the costs of the DSL
connection and if a profit was made the IMC could keep that. 

This would pave the way for my long term goal which is to have a
downtown urbana cooperative non-profit internet service provider. The
IMC could build a reputation and internal experience with running a
web hosting service and could build a client base large enough to
support a better network connection for increased streaming services
and other such things.

*************************
***   Pros and Cons   ***
*************************

IMC Pros:
 * Building a reputation as a network service provider in the community.
 * Increased financial stability for groogroo services which IMC relies on. 
 * Any profits made from selling services beyond costs of service will
   go to the IMC.
 * IMC will have significant input in the direction of this
   hosting service and can avoid the possibility of the service being
   "privatized" or canceled all together.
 
IMC Cons:
 * Must handle financial transactions and billing. 

Zach Pros:
 * Doesn't have to create a separate business entity for groogroo billing
 * Gets reimbursed for a service he can no longer afford on his own
 * 501c3 status for groogroo services may be an incentive for some
   clients depending on billing structure.
 
Zach Cons:
 * Can't reap profits from services offered.
 * Retains liability for $200-$250/mo DSL contract with Sol Tec

Unknowns:
 * How much should we charge for various services?
 * Should the IMC itself pay for the services it uses? (See below)
 * Can we use system with a required small fee and a larger suggested
   donation so that the second part can be deductible?
 * Can/should we have a negotiable sliding scale for fees?
 * Should we require payment 1 year at a time rather than monthly for
   small clients to ease the accounting?
 * At some future date if the profits from the service are high and the
   work load involved in providing the service is correspondingly high,
   can sysadmin services be paid for as part of the cost of service? Or
   will sysadmin always remain volunteer? This can be answered in the
   future.
 * How will organizations (e.g. Critical Mass) without their own
   central organization pay for service? Probably individuals will step
   forward to sponsor service for that org.

A Note about IMC payment for service from Zachary Miller:
The question then is what should the IMC pay? I'm willing to cover any
shortfall due to lack of sufficient client base (this shortfall will
by definition be less than the $250/mo that I am already paying and
hence represent a savings to me). But how do we define shortfall?

If our costs are $250/mo and we have $150/mo worth of clients and we
value based on our fee structure that the services that the IMC
receives are worth $20/mo then is there a $100 shortfall for me to
cover or is there a $80 shortfall for me to cover? I believe the IMC
should pledge some amount of support to the server but the mere
support of bookkeeping services may be entirely sufficient. This is a
point for discussion.

*************************
***   Fee Structure   ***
*************************

Below is an example fee structure for groogroo services: (sufficient
data is not yet available to set specific fees but it is assumed that
the average small client would pay a total of $5-$10/month)

Basic Setup Fee
     includes one low traffic email list
     includes one low traffic website in the cu.groogroo.com domain
     includes one skilled-user account for maintenance
DNS Hosting Fee per Domain per Year
     Website Hosting Fee per GB transfered per Month
     High Traffic Email List Fee per List per Month
       lists with a large number of users
       lists with a large amount of traffic
       lists with a large amount of special support needs
Low Traffic Email List Fee per List per Year
Skilled User Account Fee
     users who know UNIX and sign up to maintain a website
Unskilled User Account Fee
     users who don't know UNIX and sign up to access email, includes
     POP access and some tech support
Multimedia Services Fee per GB per Month
     streaming and mp3 hosting, this should cost more per GB than
     regular websites because of the nature of the data transfers

*************************
** Potential Clients  ***
*************************

A potential list of immediate clients includes:

1. Arun Bhalla - server colocation
2. Daria Karetnikov - minor server colocation
3. Zach Miller - everything
4. Champaign-Urbana Critical Mass - website and email list Eric Kolb's
5. Original Works MP3 Server - multimedia hosting, possible domain hosting
in thefuture
6. Champaign-Urbana Wireless Project - website and email list
7. Danielle Chynoweth for Urbana City Council - website and email list,
multiple email lists requested. domain hosting.
8. Illinois Power Customers United To Save Our Trees - multiple email
lists
9. Groogroo Application Server - website and email list
10. Anti-War, Anti-Racism Effort - website, MySQL database, CGI access,
user accounts, multiple email lists, domain hosting.
11. Newspoetry - website, email list, domain hosting, RealAudio streaming
12. Springfield Independent Media Center - not hosted yet, "active" tree,
website, possible domain hosting.
13. WEFT 90.1 FM Community Radio for East Central Illinois - domain
hosting, multiple email lists, in the future website hosting and possibly
an "active" tree.
14. Prairiegreens of East Central Illinois - multiple email lists,
15. John Wason - email account
16. Pauline Bartolone - email account (not set up yet)
17. Alien Hand - website, domain hosting
18. Buster's Dream - website, domain hosting
19. Dale C. Miller - website, domain hosting

Future possible clients:

1. Barbara Dyskant - may want: email account, domain hosting, website
2. Paul Riismandel - has multiple websites and domains to host
3. Russ Rybiki - wants a website and domain hosting
4. ISEN - ?? never talked to them about this
5. SDAS - ?? never talked to them about this
6. Illinois Fair Trade Coalition - move urbana-act off of Yahoo? host a
website? I already own ilfairtrade.org but it is unused at the moment.
7. WEFT - in a murky future when we have the bandwidth, we could offer a
WEFT stream.
8. Local Unions
9. Other organizations & individuals


-- 
Zachary C. Miller - @= - http://wolfgang.groogroo.com/
IMSA 1995 - UIUC 2000 - Just Another Leftist Muppet - Ya Basta!
 Social Justice, Community, Nonviolence, Decentralization, Feminism,
 Sustainability, Responsibility, Diversity, Democracy, Ecology